Are you concerned with Facebook security issues that have recently made the news lately? Even if you don’t have a Facebook account, you should be concerned. Did you have time to watch Facebook executives, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg weigh in on the security problems at Facebook?

They had polished answers to questions and delivered “sincere” apologies and promises to do better. Quite frankly, I’ve heard enough about apologies, I want to see action. Were the people at the top penalized? Did they take pay cuts for their organizations goof ups?

If you heard any news about the Facebook nonsense, you would realize, this isn’t the first time that Facebook has had security issues. It isn’t an issue to the management because Facebook hasn’t had their bottom line on the accounting page affected. Facebook is just another mechanism to generate a lot of money for a select few.

Facebook was not something that was created to make it easy for the average student to communicate with classmates. Zuckerberg didn’t realize what he had created until it became something that could be used for an advertising delivery mechanism. When it went IPO, it was pretty clear that it was a tool for advertising.

Do you know that you can OPT-OUT of some of the Facebook settings? If you want to be anonymous in Facebook, you have to PAY for that service. Facebook will mine data about you but you have to pay to keep that information private. WHAT A DEAL! Recently, I received a notice from a credit card transaction company about a new service that they are offering. If you don’t specifically request not to have the new service, the company gives you the service and will increase your bill $15/month. Is this how you do business?

Your privacy is something that we all need to protect. Don’t rely on government and big companies to do it for you. “Trust me…” Trust is like respect. It has to be earned. If a company has displayed problems in the past, shouldn’t that make you think twice before you trust them with your privileged information?

These types of problems aren’t unique to Facebook. Any organization that stores information about people can be ripe pickings for data thieves. It might seem like a good idea to keep as much information about members of an organization but a better idea might be to keep only information that is critical to business.

Europeans are much more enlightened when it comes to privacy. The United States could take a few lessons from Europe’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) but it does appear that state and federal legislatures are beginning to take privacy seriously.